The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ―Edmund Burke

Fell Off the Diet Wagon!

This morning the body broke the 140 barrier for the first time: down to 139.1 pounds! w00t!

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Yeah. It did at 5:30 this morning.

Then it was off to Scottsdale for the Thursday ayem shindig at The Good Egg.

There’s a problem with The Good Egg: there’s nothing to eat there. If you can’t eat eggs (urp!!! ….literally, and immediately) and you’re trying to hold your blood pressure down by not eating stuff with salt in it and you’re trying to keep the weight down by abstaining from breads and pancakes and English muffins and you’re not eating sugary stuff like sweetened yogurt, there’s nothing to eat there! As usual, I ordered a bowl of fruit, which as usual came out soggy and uninspiring, and drank a lot of bad coffee.

By the time I got home around 9 a.m., I was so hungry I decided I would forget the piss-poor packaged berries garnished with half a banana and move on a full meal. Had a piece of steak in the freezer but was low on veggies, so drove back out to the store and picked up some delicious broccolini and…yes! Some lovely little red new potatoes! Cooked all this stuff on the grill, and what the hell…the sun was over the yardarm somewhere, so opened a bottle of wine and had a couple of snorts of that to wash down the feast.

Very lovely.

Figured to eat salad the rest of the day. That actually is a routine that’s been working: cook up a great, fairly large meal for breakfast (sans the wine chaser) and then eat really light from then on.

What I didn’t figure on was M’hijito calling at quittin’ time to invite me out for Mexican food.

Now, you’d think a grown woman with will power could resist that siren call, wouldn’t you? No. There’s just no way I’m going to turn down an invitation from my wonderful son to go out to dinner. And once seated at our favorite hole in the wall, the chances of turning down chips, salsa, beer, a relleno stuffed with melted cheese, a side of refried beans, and another beer are exactly nil.

Nil, nil, nil! And soooooo good!

It’s nine p.m., and I’m still so stuffed I can barely wriggle. And I suppose we could have some sort of lottery betting on how fat I’ll be by tomorrow ayem!

😆

The early-morning meeting put the eefus on the vigorous swim before the carcinogenic sun comes up. At noon it was so freaking hot and humid in the house that I decided to risk death and take a plunge in the pool at high noon.

And that’s when I realized something: jumping off the side and splashing around in the deep end while the dog races back and forth yapping is play. Locking the dog in the house and swimming twice the length of the pool 33 times is work.

Which, presumably, is why I’m finding it difficult to make myself do that once or twice a day. Work is just not my thing.

Not that it wasn’t pleasant enough swimming up and down by moonlight this evening. Just…that it’s work.

Oh, I totally understand about how difficult it is to find something to eat at most restaurants! I’m also trying to limit the amount of empty carbs I eat (bread, pancakes, muffins, pasta, etc). I’ve also found that if I completely avoid the cow dairy products I was told a few years ago to stay away from by my doc, I will not have diverticulitis flairs. That means yogurt, cheese, and anything with a creamy sauce is out. For a while I was trying to avoid all meat and animal products that came from industrial agricultural operations (like CAFOs, or those enormous pig and chicken operations) for ethical reasons. Oh, and I also need to avoid soy because of my compromised thyroid function.

That left me able to eat *nothing* at standard restaurants. I could get a carnitas salad or bowl (if I was OK with eating rice that day) at Chipotle since their meat-buying practices meet my ethical standards (as long as they are being truthful), but one can’t eat at Chipotle every time a dining out opportunity comes up.

For my own health, I decided that I needed to relax my standards around meat. Now I can eat at a lot more restaurants. Too bad so many vegan places use so much soy. There’s a chain called Native Foods that I had hoped would work for me, but they have soy in *every* dish they serve, with the exception of some specials offered occasionally. Why do most restaurants think all vegetarian meals must include cow cheese and all vegan meals include soy? 🙁 Middle Eastern and some Asian restaurants are the exceptions.

Go into a restaurant and look at what they serve, and you’ll realize these desiderata eliminate almost everything on the menu! You can’t even have a salad unless you tell them to hold the cottage cheese (full of salt), hold the Parmesan (ditto), hold the blue cheese (ditto), hold the croutons, and hold the dressing (full of both sugar and salt). Tomorrow some friends and I are meeting for shopping and lunch…I intend to bring a little spice jar filled with my own vinaigrette dressing to put on the restaurant’s undressed salad.

I’m really glad I don’t need to watch my sodium intake, that’s for sure! Fat– even saturated fat — is not an issue for me at this point. If I can stay away from the simple carbs and get a decent amount of exercise in, I’m doing OK. My total cholesterol levels have gotten better, since I focused more on eliminating simple carbs and limited my intake of CAFO meat. I was at 126 total cholesterol a few months ago, which is about 20 points lower than I’ve been in a few years. (I still have pastured pig in the freezer that is fatty, yet not impacting my cardio health at all, apparently.)

For the past 20+ years I’ve preferred to make my own vinegar & oil dressings at home, and in restaurants I ask for vinegar and oil on the side. That plus some salt & pepper works great for most salads I eat. Although, if you’re not able to eat the salt, I completely understand packing your own dressing.

It kind of hints that the underlying reason for the so-called “obesity epidemic” has as much to do with the quality of food Americans eat as it does with the amount or the type. I’m convinced that most people eat in restaurants quite a lot, and that relatively few Americans cook most of their own food at home. And restaurant food, being mostly processed food high in salt, sugar, and fat, clearly isn’t very healthy. When you add the CAFO meat, what you get is meals based around an animal product that STARTS processed food containing unhealthy chemicals — in the form of antibiotics, weird food fed to the animals, and the animals’ own stress hormones — and is soaked in brine and cooked in grease before it’s served up.

First congrats on the huge weight loss! That is an accomplishment in itself. There isn’t much that is going to be considered healthy or good for you at restaurants. However when the wifey lost weight she ate out. No not just salad but she would never get anything but water to save calories, rarely did she get appetizers, and she never at more than half the meal. I looked at the calorie count as some places and the calorie intake for some meals are more than what some people should consume for one day!!! Keep up the great work and we find its easier to eat better and consume less calories then to kill ourselves working out.

Moi, I don’t care for soda or for most restaurant-style sweets, so that has never been an issue. A beer or two or a glass of wine are the usual downfall for me; if the joint doesn’t serve booze, then it’s unsweetened iced tea. And yeah: most restaurants really do serve way too much food. It’s come to be expected…Americans will complain if they get smaller servings.

There’s no question restaurant food is hideously oversalted. It starts with processed ingredients that are already full of salt (and sugar) and then the cook adds a little more salt; often diners sprinkle on some more at the table. Yesterday morning I met a friend at a restaurant in Scottsdale, where I ordered a single supposedly very special sausage and a bowl of fruit. Came away with my mouth puckered down to my knees, that sausage was so salty! Yuck!!

The exercise is huge in terms of suppressing the anxiety attacks. And the good news is, you don’t really have to kill yourself: a recent large study suggested ten minutes of brisk walking, bicycling, or actually using your expensive bedroom sculpture instead of draping clothes over it, done three times a day, was better than a single 30-minute session. Most of us can break loose ten minutes to burn off a few calories.